Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility has rarely looked as ravishing as in this sparkling adaptation from the Tamil film industry, the lesser-known but equally extravagant South Indian counterpart to Bollywood's northern dominance. The tale remains the same-two sisters look for love amid familial tragedy and a threesome of eligible males-but director Rajiv Menon (Mani Ratnam's former cinematographer) refreshingly weds it to a cinematic landscape of unabashed lyricism, where lovers burst into song, quote Tamil poetry, and fall into mountain lakes or fields of flowers. The trans-Indian cast (including Bollywood queen and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai, and Malayalam film legend Mammooty) lends a star power reminiscent of Hollywood's golden age, with soft-focus glamour shots that would make von Sternberg and Dietrich envious. With one character a computer programmer and another a stock-market guru, this vision of Austen makes room not only for song and dance, but for the India of the twenty-first century.

I Have Found It is repeated on Sunday, November 7.